Saturday, August 13, 2011

"People say suicide is selfish. I think it’s selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won’t feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it’s also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day."

Asterix books contain 704 victims of brain injury, study finds - "Of the 704 victims, 698 were male and 63.9% were Roman. One hundred and twenty were Gauls, 59 were bandits or pirates, 20 were Goths, 14 were Normans, eight were Vikings, five were Britons and four were extraterrestrials. The majority of injuries were caused by the indomitable Gauls (87.1%), with Asterix and his large sidekick Obelix themselves responsible for more than half (57.6%)... Karl Schaller, a neurosurgeon at the University of Geneva, commended the authors for their "stimulating analysis", noting particularly the issue of absent helmets"

Under-achievement and the glass ceiling: Evidence from a TV game show - "We use a Colombian TV game show to test gender differences in competitive behavior where there is no opportunity for discrimination and females face no genderspecific external constraints... Despite equality in starting numbers, women earn less than men and exit the game at a faster rate. In particular, there are more voluntary withdrawals by women than men. We draw an analogy between the game and the process by which employees rise through the levels of a corporation. As such, we note that “glass ceilings” may result, in part, from women’s own behavior and this raises the issue of how women are socialized to behave"Considering the fact that there is already self-selection in who comes on the game show, this is tellingAddendum: Yet more evidence that women are less competitive than men

The Glue Society's "I Wish You Hadn't Asked" - "The Glue Society has constructed a fully functional house in Aarhus, and for the month of June is making it rain continuously indoors, with the resulting decomposition of the building being observable both inside and out"

One More Reason Religion Is So Messed Up: Respected Theologian Defends Genocide and Infanticide - "He said that as long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to kill pretty much anybody. It's okay to kill bad people, because they're bad and they deserve it... and it's okay to kill good people, because they wind up in Heaven. As long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to systematically wipe out entire races. As long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to slaughter babies and children... So why did this story not make headlines? Why was there not an appalled outcry from the Christian world? Why didn't Christian leaders from all sects take to the pulpits to disavow Craig, and to express their utter repugnance with his views, and to explain in no uncertain terms that their religion does not, and will not, defend the extermination of races or the slaughter of children? Because the things he said are not that unusual. Because lots of people share his views... all too often, religion twists even the most fundamental human morality into positions that, in any other circumstance, most people would see as repulsive, monstrous, and entirely indefensible... Craig says that the Canaanites were evil, and deserving of genocide, because (among other things) they practiced infanticide. The very crime that God ordered the Israelites to commit... he says the infanticide of the Canaanite children was defensible and necessary because the Israelites needed to keep their tribal identity pure, and keep their God-given morality untainted by the Canaanite wickedness... It's funny. One of the most common pieces of bigotry aimed at atheism is that it doesn't provide any basis for morality"

Bering in Mind: Why I'm Not Proud of Being Gay - "Pride is portrayed as being inherently antisocial, a very, very bad thing... prestige-based, authentic pride emotions are the product of doingrather than simply being... Now, as far as I know, I haven’t done anything—at least deliberately so—to render my brain attracted to penises instead of vaginas. So "gay pride" under the guise of authentic pride seems just as problematic to me as it does for hubristic pride. We can’t have it both ways... I’m no more proud of being gay than I am of being Caucasian, of having type I diabetes, of being 5'7"—okay, in heels—or of having abnormally stocky hands for a man my size... the absence of pride is not shame... "gay pride"... rests on the assumption of a largely mythical, collective gay identity. In my everyday life, and unless you bring it up, being gay is about as salient to my self-concept as is my having brown hair or driving a Honda; I don’t feel—wait for the gasps—a particular affinity with other gay people just because they’re gay... [Gay pride's] lurid excesses that invigorate the very same stereotypes that we spend the rest of the year fighting against"

Ramadan for business travellers - ""Not much happens. Government bureaus are mostly shut while banks have very odd hours"... roads may also be more dangerous than usual during Ramadan, as tiredness and hunger leads to a deterioration in driving standards... criminal activity tends to increase in the final weeks of the month prior to Eid al-Fitr, as a result of the need for extra money for celebrations... Ultimately, Ramadan is a time for personal reflection for Muslims"

What went wrong? - "[The 1990s] housing boom, followed by a collapse of the bubble and the consequent glut of unsold flats – left a permanent scar in the psyche of housing planners in government. The experience made the HDB extremely wary of stepping up construction in response to an anticipated increase in demand... The same conclusion applies to our transport policies as well and in particular, the development of new MRT lines. Throughout the early 2000s, MOF routinely turned down requests from MOT and LTA to finance new rail lines. These decisions (many of which I was involved in) were made on the basis of the government’s recent experiences with the Northeast Line... The PAP government is also not as rational or pragmatic as it claims. Instead of subjecting new arguments or evidence to critical analysis, it often reverts to a few unspoken but deeply held ideological biases (of anti-welfarism, elite governance, the primacy of growth, Singapore's inherent vulnerabilities, etc). These ideological assumptions and biases are frequently relied on to deflect policy proposals which decision-makers are instinctively uncomfortable with. They represent a form of security blanket that policymakers take refuge in whenever our policies are subject to serious criticism, and they hinder truly out-of-the-box thinking in dealing with our most pressing problems"

Georgian PM Visits Singapore - “When we say that Georgian should become like Singapore, we do not mean eliminating political freedoms... lasting political process and stability, which is only possible when citizens follow us"

Norway’s Terrorism in Context - "Anders Behring Breivik’s rampage, in other words, was hardly unprecedented. In the past, one had the cold comfort of knowing that deranged acts such as his were carried out by individuals under the sway of extremist ideologies. Not so Behring Breivik. This terrorist lists among his favorite authors George Orwell, Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Ayn Rand, and William James... [One site] counts 17,500 terrorist incidents on behalf of Islam in the past ten years; extrapolating, that comes to some 25,000 since 1994. We are dealing with two very different orders of magnitude... Beyond massacring innocent Norwegians, Behring Breivik damaged conservatism, the counterjihad, and (in particular) those authors he cited in his writings... He calls me a “moderate,” which obviously is not meant as a compliment, and dismisses even the hardest-line critics of Islam as lacking in courage"

Man Photographing Grandson In Park Deemed Suspicious By Police And Media - "The older, white man was seen photographing children in a public park in Idaho, so it didn’t take long for an overprotective mother to chase him off. She then called the cops, who in turn alerted the media, who quickly posted articles warning citizens about this dangerous man lurking in the park with his camera, running off after being confronted... Last year in the United Kingdom, a man was accused of pedophilia for photographing his son in a mall. In 2008, a UK man was called a "pervert" for photographing his own kids in a park"Male Privilege!

If you don't speak English you can't belong in Britain - "We can only search for the common good through face-to-face discussion and public debate via the mass media. The simple fact is that if you can’t speak the language, you can’t take part. You can’t belong. And treating the requirement to speak the language of the people you plan to live among as an infringement of your rights gives away a self-centred attitude that is incompatible with citizenship... the least we can do is to learn the language. It does not require individuals to surrender their culture, merely to be able to communicate with everyone else... Ted Cantle produced the official report on the 2001 riots and described the “parallel lives” being lived by local whites and other people, largely from the Mirpur region of Pakistan"Naturally, some people are calling this racist, classist etc

"The proven method for accelerating the learning process in the schools of the ancients consisted of threats or actual beatings. The verbs for instruction in Egyptian and Hebrew carry therefore a double meaning... 'to rebuke' with words as well as with blows"

--- Where can wisdom be found?: the sage's language in the Bible and in ancient Egyptian literature / Nili Shupak

Thursday, August 11, 2011

"Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?" - Artemus Ward

***

I was at City Square at Little India and got ambushed by a 21 year old SYT representing the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

Naturally I knew what she wanted from me but I decided to guai lan her because I had a bit of extra time.

She asked me if I knew what WWF stood for. When I guessed "World Wildlife Fund' she high-fived me, before proclaiming I was wrong. Upon prompting I essayed "Worldwide Fund for Nature" and she high-fived me again (apparently they'd changed their name recently and it was somewhere in my brain).

She asked if I were Singaporean and said "You speak very well, I thought you're not Singaporean... [but] Indonesian".

She then went on with her pitch.

She said that tigers were being hunted to extinction, and it'd be sad if our children would not be able to view tigers. I graciously refrained from pointing out that her visual aid referred only to Malayan and Sumatran tigers, and that this would not be a problem if one did not intend to have children.

She asked me if I knew what they were killed for and professed to be a little shocked when I mentioned "penises, skins". She added that they were also killed for their brains, and that it was cruel to kill them just for that.

Then she asked if I were against animal abuse. As good salespeople know establishing rapport through getting your mark to agree with you boosts the possibility that you'll seal the deal.

However she was in for a surprise, since I pointed out that most people have inconsistent stands on animal rights. Specifically, the first of the two key points pinpointing the problem - "cute animals are just as tasty as ugly ones".

I added that factory farmed animals suffer more than poached animals since the former suffer all their lives whereas the latter do so only at the end. I then asked if she were vegetarian, and she admitted that she was not. When I told her I was not either because I didn't believe animals had moral personhood, she didn't pursue the point, possibly because she had no idea what I meant.

Giving up, she asked if I abused animals personally and was satisfied when I answered in the negative, as she said she wouldn't want to talk to me if I did. This was fortunate (for her), as it meant I did not have to talk about utilitarianism and second effects with regard to factory farming. It also meant I didn't have to broach the second key issue - "why is it okay to kill animals for food, but not have sex with them?" Given her reaction to tiger penises, doubtless this would've consternated her even more.

She then went on to talk about another topic - Earth Day. Whereupon I pointed out that Earth Day was Carbon Positive - more carbon was spent in its organization and promotion than was saved by turning lights off for an hour [Ed: I wasn't right about the details but the idea is there]. She seemed to misunderstand, since she said WWF's partners like the Ministry of Environment did publicity for them, and I didn't press the issue. Predictably she said "awareness" was the target, whereupon I countered that studies showed that there was a substitution effect - people tended to stop at small, symbolic actions and not perform bigger ones.

Wisely, she didn't even try and talk about another item in their program - shark finning, or I'd have had even more to say.

She then asked me to sign up for a recurring donation, but I demurred at the suggestion, in the process asking which plan she was on (she said she was on the cheapest scheme), telling her the same thing I told the Singapore Cancer Society promotor a few months back - I preferred to spread my donation dollars around. She said it was just over a dollar a day, and I said if 100 organizations asked me for a dollar a day I would be down a hundred dollars a day. She seemed surprised, and I vaguely added that "you wouldn't believe how many people approach me".

"I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end." - Margaret Thatcher

***

N. China
Day 12 - 10th November - Departure

"Law, order... the environment and sanitation, municipal affairs, public affairs, city water conservation, plant decor, upkeep of the grounds, city rivers and lakes... parking"
Chairman of the Neighborhood Watch - it'd be easier to list the things he was NOT in charge of

I saw two soldiers walking in step on the pavement. I thought they were off duty, but I guess they were in uniform so they still had to do so either way.

There was a KFC ad which kept playing on the subway, featuring office workers and kids going ecstatic at the line "开饭了!" ("Break out the rice!"). The date November 15th was then flashed. Seems they took a leaf from Indonesia's book.

Slovakia's ripped Olympic aspirations

At McDonald's I ordered a Sausage McMuffin with Egg, as it was my last chance to have proper pork sausage. I asked to change the drink to orange juice, and was told it was "凉" (cool). I asked if there was hot orange juice. I don't know who drinks hot orange juice. Or maybe cold drinks for breakfast is inimical to Chinese culture (ergo why I couldn't get cold soya bean milk at KFC).

The McDonalds paper bag boasted that most of their outlets were 24 hour ones.

"Welcome Again" (on the exit doors)

The PA system on the train said we should "尊老爱幼" ("Respect the Elderly and Love the Young"). Apparently this is a Chinese national value.

The railway's "Four Capabilities"

At the airport I saw a Burger King and Kenny Rogers. I hadn't seen them anywhere else.

"Train Disinfected Regularly"
I am somewhat comforted, given an airport staff member (with an ID and lanyard) also spat on the airport floor.

One girl at the airport didn't look too bad. I thought this was proof for one of my many theories, and that she was flying somewhere to work - then I saw her passport was Japanese.

They sold insurance at the airport. This was not comforting.

"Advance the Chinese Service Develop a international Hub"

"Tianjin Chestnut
Sand cookies with chocolate"

I waited until after I'd checked in to buy little snacks back to Singapore, but inside the International Departures area they sold mostly International foodstuff like Merci chocolates. I guess no one wanted Chinese produce.

The prices in duty free were also 1.5-2 times of that outside the International Departures area, because those travelling internationally would be able to afford it. Grr. Liquour at least was cheaper than in Singapore, but I was advised that the Bailey's sampler pack would not be able to pass through Hong Kong airport security. Gah.

Eventually I found some BJ snacks, but it took a lot of effort. They were 1¥ cheaper than in the main area though (27¥ vs 28¥).

"Opening Hours 0:00-24:00"

Hong Kong airport: "Beware of Electric Carts"
This sign made me realise that in China there is generally no penalty stated for offences - maybe because the courts are empowered to throw anything up to and including the death penalty at you.

"We are committed to serve you at best!"
And at worst?

In a shop at Hong Kong airport: "Black Ice Fashion Readers are the latest fashion accessory that will improve your vision and enhance your appearance". This was the text of the eye test for said product (off the shelf prescription glasses; they didn't let me take a photo).

I was feeling peckish as I'd had breakfast but no lunch, so I had a Taiwanese Pork Chop bun with grilled onions inside. It had a bit more character than the Macanese version, and was less one-dimensional.

One flight steward was called "Athens". Maybe "Sparta" was too manly a name.

"Lesbians were more likely than males to have tried to relinquish their homosexuality and "go straight"—which is ironic because lesbians expressed fewer regrets about their homosexuality and were less likely to wish for a "magic pill" that would instantly transform them into heterosexuals. Golden (1987) too was struck by inconsistencies between women's thoughts and feelings regarding sexual orientation. Her sample exhibited remarkable incongruences, including women who identified as lesbians (often for political reasons) but whose sexual behavior had been exclusively heterosexual, as well as the reverse pattern of women who identified themselves as heterosexuals but had only had sex with women"

"Women are more likely than men to have submissive and masochistic fantasies... Women are more likely than men to report having such desires and interests, but they are less likely than men to report taking part in such activities... [This data] rule out one further alternative explanation that could apply to the homosexuality data. I have said that men mainly show discrepancies between desire and behavior because of lack of opportunity: Many men want to engage in sex but cannot find a willing female partner... In masochism, however, it is usually opposite-sex partners who are sought, and so women would be seeking men to dominate them. Women ought therefore to enjoy an advantage over men when both are trying to act out then- submissive fantasies, and so this alternative explanation would predict that women would have higher attitude-behavior consistency in this sphere. Instead, women again show more inconsistency, which fits the broad pattern I have hypothesized, namely that women's attitudes and behaviors are less consistent than men's when it comes to sex."

"Some paraphilias seem incontrovertibly learned. Latex, for example, has not existed on the planet long enough to influence evolutionary processes and genetic markers, and so a latex fetish seems most plausibly interpreted as something learned rather than innate (although it is difficult to rule out the possibility that this fetish is a byproduct of some other genetic, innate tendency)"

"[Supposedly] cultural and social factors selectively target their efforts to control sexuality at women... The fact that women report more choice than men regarding sexual orientation (Savin- Williams, 1990; Whisman, 1996; see also Rosenbluth, 1997, on voluntary heterosexuality) runs directly counter to the view that men have all the choices and women are imprisoned by rigid social factors. Likewise, the evidence about women who in midlife start having sex with other women while still enjoying sex with men suggests plasticity rather than coercion"

"The patriarchal oppression theory particularly invokes the so-called double standard, under which certain acts are more permissible for men than for women. This view has difficulty explaining many of the modern findings, however, because the double standard has been difficult to document in modern research and many researchers have concluded that it has disappeared or is disappearing, especially among women (DeLamater & MacCorquodale, 1979; Sprecher, 1989; Sprecher & Hatfield, 1996; cf. Robinson et al., 1991)... For example, T. Smith (1994) reports that national (Roper) polls found only a small minority endorsing a double standard in 1959 (8%) and even 1937 (7%)"

"The greater consensual lesbianism in prison (as compared with consensual homosexuality among imprisoned males) would be interpreted by the selective control explanation as a sign that prison frees women from the compulsive heterosexuality enforced by society. This alternative explanation thus rests on the doubtful assumption that women are more free in prison than out of it. It also suggests that when a woman reverts to heterosexuality after prison, she is simply coming back under the control of patriarchy. These views stretch the bounds of plausibility. Most situational analyses would conclude that people are less free in prison than out of it—especially with regard to sexual choices."

"Someone might argue that religion is a tool of male oppression (which entails suppressing female sexuality) whereas education liberates women and allows them to discover and pursue their own desires. This explanation has difficulty explaining the powerful historical facts that Christianity has long appealed to women more than to men, both during its rise to power in the Roman empire (see Stark, 1996) and during the transition into the modern era (Cott, 1977), and that even today female church attendance and membership rates are higher than male. The selective control explanation seemingly must propose that women wanted to be exploited and sexually stifled by Christian doctrines (and still do), a stance that seems sufficiently questionable as to call for strong supporting evidence before it can be accepted.

Moreover, if religion is a tool of patriarchy that shapes women to serve men, then the highly religious should show the greatest convergence between the genders in practices that serve men, such as fellatio. The evidence indicates the opposite, however"

"Instead of concluding that educational and religious institutions have stronger effects on female than on male sexual behavior, perhaps women's sexual inclinations dictate (more than men's) how much education they pursue and how religious they become. Although such explanations do not seem highly plausible a priori (e.g., why would engaging in anal sex increase a person's likelihood of earning a master's degree?), they cannot be ruled out with available data... Why sexually permissive women would seek and achieve higher levels of education is however a mystery"

"A determined advocate of the ceiling artifact might dismiss the findings about religion by suggesting that religion mainly tries to control female behavior and is relatively indifferent to male sexual behavior. This view is implausible on several counts. As Tannahill (1980) pointed out in her history of sex, early Christianity was more hostile and restrictive toward sex than any of its contemporary religions, and its restrictiveness applied to both genders. The basic Christian view was that "physical pleasure of all kinds is sinful" (DeLamater, 1981, p. 264). This doctrine appears to have had strong appeal to women, and in fact, the early rise in Christian church membership involved a more rapid expansion of female than male members (Stark, 1996). Celibacy was in fact sought and cultivated as a lifestyle by many early Christian women"

"Men fall in love faster than women and hence are likely to feel loving affection and the accompanying sexual desire at an earlier point in the relationship"

"Cowan and Dunn (1994) exposed both male and female participants to pornographic films that were classified into nine different story themes, and participants were asked to rate their arousal levels. One of these themes, labeled "submission" by the researchers, involved a woman who was initially reluctant to have sex but changed her mind during the scene and became an active, willing participant in sexual activity. Women rated this theme by far the most sexually arousing of the nine (see also Fisher & Byrne, 1978). These studies thus suggest that the woman's transition from no to yes, as an idea, increases sexual excitement. A review of the literature on sexual fantasies found that fantasies of being overpowered and forced to have sex were far more common among women than men"

"Modern norms of egalitarianism and equitable relationships suggest that people should compromise and seek joint, mutually satisfying decisions, but the calculation of compromise is rendered more difficult by differential plasticity"

"Homosexual communities, for example, are in a sense oppressed minority groups and ones from which members may be tempted to defect. If people leave such communities and join the heterosexual mainstream, the survival of the communities could be jeopardized. Given the data reviewed here, such defections are likely to be a bigger problem and threat for female than male homosexual groups. Sure enough, lesbian communities have ongoing and sometimes bitter struggles over defectors to heterosexuality, which may be less of a problem for gay male groups"

"Women are less certain than men of what they want in sex and how to get it"

"Feminist analysis has favored the social construction of sexuality, whereas the subsequent rise of evolutionary theories has been dominated by male theorists. If women are indeed more socioculturally malleable than men, then the social constructionist theories would resonate intuitively with women more than men, whereas the reverse would hold for biological and evolutionary theories"

"Persistent claims that only six per cent of rapes end in conviction was seen as a useful "campaigning tool " by some but was "extremely unhelpful", warned Baroness Stern, the cross-bench peer who carried out a six month review in to tackling rape.

She said it has dominated the debate "without explanation, analysis and context" to the "detriment of public understanding" over the rape issues.

She said the figure, which compares the number of convictions against total reports to the police, is based on calculations not used for any other offence.

Once a rape case reaches the courts, almost 60 per cent of defendants are convicted – a rate higher than some other violent attacks...

... The peer did not single out individuals for criticism but concluded: "It is clear to us that the way the six per cent conviction rate figures has been able to dominate the public discourse on rape, without explanation, analysis and context, is extremely unhelpful.

"There is anecdotal evidence that it may well have discouraged some victims from reporting"...

A report in to the effectiveness of juries, published by the Ministry of Justice last month, confirmed that rapists are more likely to be convicted than acquitted, with higher success rates than those for rates for grievous bodily harm, threats to kill, manslaughter and attempted murder"

"You’re in love with a thing. Let’s say it’s coffee, books, design, code or solving interesting problems. You decide to open up a café to follow your passion for coffee. Or a used book shop, because you’re passionate about books. Or, because you’re passionate about solving interesting problems through code or visuals, you hang out your shingle as a freelance developer or designer.

Six months to a year later, and guess what?

Turns out that you hate running a café (or book store, or…). Turns out that running a café is as much about the coffee as raising a child is about snuggles. Yes, the coffee happens — and so do snuggles — but what really makes up the typical day is very little sleep and lots and lots of poop....

Follow Your Passion... The Cute Little Café Syndrome applies to any situation where you blindly follow your passion… and it leads you to a pit of despair (or at least, a pit of debt)...

There’s only one thing for it: abandon meatless aphorisms like “Follow Your Passion!” and take stock of reality.
In reality…

Turning your beloved, refreshing hobby into a job can kill it.

Doing something you love for yourself isn’t the same as doing it for others.

You can love something and not know the slightest thing about it.

You can love something and not be good at it.

You might not know what Your Passion™ is, at least not with enough fiery motivation to get you going.

You may believe you’re passionate about a subject but it’s likely your true deep-down-fulfillment passion is about actions, connections, or environment.

Or, your logical conclusion is that you should engage in actions when your passion is really a subject.

The Poop Factor is ever-present: most of what goes into running a real business is very different than what you fantasize about.

Finally… some things just aren’t money-making propositions. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love them.

... Don’t assume that just because you love coffee, you should open a café.

Or because you love books and cozy reading nooks, a book store...

If you want to run a successful café — and enjoy it — you need to love a lot more than coffee. You’ve also gotta get some kind of pleasure, even grim satisfaction, out of the daily grind. (Ha ha.)"